The FBI is out with a warning to parents about a rise in sextortion crimes that have been reported in recent years. But more and more often, it’s not sexual gratification that’s behind the demand for pictures, and it’s not always young girls who are being pressured into providing more graphic content.
Instead, crooks living overseas are asking their victims for money, and their targets tend to be teenage boys who might not have a lot. The FBI said it received over 13,000 reports for those types of crimes just between October of 2021 and March of 2023, and at least 20 of the victims ended up committing suicide after they were targeted.
Often times, the crooks have posed as teenage girls while scamming people from not just the United States, but various countries in west Africa, Southeast Asia and the rest of the world.
Supervisory Special Agent Amy Ferron, who investigates crimes against children for the FBI’s Baltimore Field Office, said it all happens faster than you think.
“It may be one image, and that’s all it takes,” Ferron said. “Within seconds or a minute, they’ve issued a threat.”
Most of the time, victims are between 14 and 17 years old, but they’ve been as young as 11. Asking prices can start out in the thousands of dollars and get negotiated down, but the threat that the pictures will be sent to friends and family or just posted online, will always be there. There’s no buying your way out of it.
“What really happens next is they say they want more money,” Ferron said. “If they did send some money, then they might come after them looking for more money. So there’s really no way to satisfy the offender’s demands.”
It’s a trend that’s been noticed by online safety groups as well.
“This is criminal gangs that have figured out a way to extract money from boys and young men in a way that we just hadn’t seen before,” said Stephen Balkam, founder and CEO of the Family Online Safety Institute. “It’s a financial exchange that the gangs are looking for, rather than what we’ve always thought about with sexting.”
He said an added difficulty is the tendency of boys to shut down and keep the problem to themselves out of shame.
Agent Ferron said kids can be approached on just about any platform, whether it’s social media, messaging apps or even online video games. She said it’s important for parents to start talking to their kids about this even earlier than you might think is necessary, since kids are getting phones, tablets and playing online games at younger and younger ages.
“There’s unfortunately this mass group of victims that can be found pretty much anywhere there is an internet connection, application platform, gaming systems, you name it,” Ferron said. “Wherever there’s some capability to be able to connect with people from all over the world, you can find predators that may be looking for vulnerable victims.”
One of the things Ferron stressed was the need for teens to be skeptical when someone suggests taking the conversation to a different platform where more privacy is afforded.
“Another platform is going to allow them to be able to send that material back and forth,” Ferron said. “So we say that’s a big red flag, if someone is trying to move you to another platform, that’s where you want to at least have a little more scrutiny. Proceed with caution. We want to say ‘don’t do it. Go tell an adult.’”
What can parents do?
It starts by having conversations you may not be ready for, and not just because it involves sex.
“Oftentimes, parents are actually even more prepared to talk about sex to their kids than they are about technology because they feel somewhat at a loss or at a disadvantage,” Balkam said. “But it’s just a must-have conversation and a way of explaining to your kids what your values are as a family, what you do and don’t expect from them, and the privilege of having a phone.”
And Ferron said the last thing you want to do is blame the child and get upset with them.
“These are kids. They’re minors. There’s a ton of different chemical things that are going on, particularly with boys in this situation,” she said. “They can’t project out, maybe see around corners, the brains are just not fully developed yet to be able to make those determinations.”
Ferron added, “You have to have an environment where they feel comfortable and safe to come and talk to you about this.”
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